Legal dramas make a comeback this fall; one is about a ‘She-Hulk’ token hire
Law in Popular Culture
Legal dramas make a comeback this fall; one is about a ‘She-Hulk’ token hire
September 6, 2022, 2:20 pm CDT
Image from Marvel Studios.
The fall TV season features several legal dramas, including two shows that feature women lawyers subjected to slights and tokenism at their elite law firms.
“After a dearth of legal dramas, suddenly they are back,” the Chicago Tribune reports. “Long live the legal drama!”
Reuters has a story on two popular new TV shows: She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Partner Track. The shows are very different, according to Reuters columnist Jenna Greene, “but both star a woman lawyer working at an elite law firm. And in both instances, she is more competent, ethical and hard-working than her white male counterparts, only to be slighted, excluded or trotted out in a show of tokenism.”
In She-Hulk, available on Disney+, lawyer Jennifer Walters is able to transform into a green, giant superhero because of her accidental exposure to the blood of her cousin, Bruce Banner, Reuters explains.
Walters is hired at fictional law firm GLK&H to be the face of a practice group dedicated to superhuman law. Walters worries that everyone will think she got the job because of her She-Hulk abilities rather than her qualifications.
In Partner Track, available on Netflix, associate Ingrid Yun is mistaken for support staff and has her ideas stolen by male lawyers. Yun “works much harder—so much harder—than her male colleagues, and for naught,” according to the Reuters story.
The Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, rolls out its top 15 list of new and returning shows, which includes several legal dramas. They are:
• The Good Fight on Paramount+, a returning legal drama that features “witty chaos, fiery office politics and eccentric courtroom wrangling.”
• Reasonable Doubt on Hulu, about a “high-powered criminal defense attorney who isn’t afraid to cut a few corners.”
• So Help Me Todd on CBS, about a lawyer who hires her “talented but less-than-successful offspring” as her law firm’s investigator.
• Family Law, on CW, about a lawyer who is a recovering alcoholic who joins her estranged father’s law firm.
See also:
ABA Journal: “10 Questions: A true Marvel, this Brooklyn lawyer is a force across a galaxy of comic book genres”
